Once upon a time, it was thought that newspaper endorsements of candidates from dog-catcher to president had considerable impact on voter behavior. The conventional wisdom for quite some time, however, has been that while they might once had strong influence in the days when newspapers were the main way people got their political and other news, that is no longer the case. Endorsements just don't matter, it's widely believed.
Most people's main source of news has been television for a couple of decades, with the Internet is rapidly gaining on television, and printed newspapers becoming an ever-more dwindling third source. There is an age differential in this that should be no surprise to anyone. Younger Americans read newspapers far less than their parents and grandparents, and they tend to follow politics less as well.
People do still turn to newspapers for local news and political coverage. But the Annenberg Public Policy Center found in 2008 that newspaper endorsements of presidential candidates don't have much impact in changing people's minds. An earlier Annenberg survey showed that many people didn't even know who their newspaper had endorsed. Large percentages of people who claimed they did know got it wrong. Of those who got it right, one percent(!!!) said the endorsement played a "great deal" and 10 percent said it played "somewhat" of a role in their voting decision. In 2004, the Pew Research Center for People & the Press found similar results.
While many surviving newspapers continue the endorsement tradition, some have bailed. For instance, the Knoxville News Sentinel, which backed John McCain editorially in 2008, has stopped endorsing candidates. Journalist and lawyer Larry Atkins recently wrote that newspapers should stick with endorsing candidates for local contests only.
One contrarian on the subject is Greg Mitchell, editor of the now-defunct print version of the newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher, and now the author of a media, politics and culture column at The Nation. In his years at E&P, he tracked newspaper endorsements. In fact, as he recently wrote, two days before Election Day 2004, he correctly predicted who would win 14 out of 15 "toss-up" states based purely on the newspaper endorsements in those states. In 2008, he got 12 out of 13 right. Of course, correlation is not causation, but that is still an impressive record.
The day before the election in 2004, Mitchell had tallied 273 newspaper endorsements for John Kerry to George W. Bush's 205. The day before the election in 2008, 273 newspapers had endorsed Barack Obama, against 172 for John McCain. Among the 123 members of the
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, 57 had endorsed Obama; zero McCain.
With an assistant, Mitchell again is tracking endorsements this year. Unlike the American President Project, which is tracking just the top 100 U.S. dailies based on circulation, Mitchell is casting a wider net. As of Friday morning, he had tallied 18 newspapers, small and large. I've added 26 more to his list. A • indicates the newspaper endorsed the candidate of the opposite party in 2008; a ° indicates no endorsement in 2008:
Romney:
Cherokee Tribune (Georgia)
Oak Daily Tribune (Michigan) •
The Pueblo Chieftain (Colorado)
Longmont Times-Call (Colorado)
Colorado Springs Gazette (Colorado) °
Omaha World Herald (Nebraska)
Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nevada)
The Dallas Morning News (Texas)
Wheeling News-Register (West Virginia)
The Intelligencer of Wheeling (West Virginia)
The Journal of Martinsburg (West Virginia)
Weirton Daily Times (West Virginia)
Parkersburg News and Sentinel (West Virginia)
The Inter-Mountain in Elkins (West Virginia)
The Bismarck Tribune (North Dakota)
North County Times (California)
The Columbian (Washington) •
The New York Observer (New York) •
The Tennessean (Nashville) •
The Orlando Sentinel (Florida) •
Obama:
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania)
The Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina) •
The Flint Journal (Michigan)
Muskegon Chronicle (Michigan)
The Sacramento Bee (California)
San Francisco Examiner (California) •
The Herald (Washington)
The Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
The Tampa Bay Times (Florida)
The Denver Post (Colorado)
Daily Camera (Colorado)
Aurora Sentinel (Colorado)
The Seattle Times (Washington)
The Capital Times (Wisconsin)
Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
Daily Astorian (Oregon)
Las Cruces Sun-News (New Mexico)
Lincoln Journal Star (Nebraska) •
Montclair Times (New Jersey)
Arkansas Times (Arkansas)
Gary Johnson
Saint Joseph Telegraph (Missouri) °
Although it also endorsed Obama in 2008, because the Tribune is in the heart of Mormon country, its rationale is worth reading. It endorsed Obama in 2008 as well, but supported George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. The editors say they thought they knew Romney from his Olympics work and his background but now cannot support him because of
his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party’s shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?"
What about your local newspaper? Has it endorsed? If so, who? And if not, who do you think it will endorse? This coming Sunday will see major action on this front.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—How Do We Get Out Of Iraq?
While we and the rest of the world digest the micro and the macro environment, the rapidly-approaching election is driving the discussion in interesting directions. For example, if Iraq is killing the GOP in the polls (which apparently bothers them far more than the Iraq death toll ever did), what should they (and we) do about Iraq? It's helpful to sample the discussion in Right Blogistan to see where things stand. The interesting thing is finding agreement but watching the ideologues squirm, trying to justify doing the right thing but for reasons that (by definition) cannot be allowed to agree with ours. Why bother? Because sometimes interesting ideas may pop out. Of course, sometimes, like in the case of Jonah Goldberg, it's simply a pleasure to see him try to justify his position and fail.
We know now that invading Iraq was the wrong decision, but that doesn't vindicate the antiwar crowd.
We now know that myriad criticisms of the Bush Administration by the left were totally accurate and proven correct (which, by the way, makes conservatives completely incorrect in virtually every assessment of Iraq from the get-go). But as many on the left have observed, conservatives think they own the word "right" and only they can use it. The Left cannot be permitted to be right, only the Right can be right (or some such nonsense). |
Tweet of the Day:
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— @morninggloria via web
A fine Friday news roundup on the
Kagro in the Morning show, plus polling from
Greg Dworkin. What's up with Gallup? Romney kills financial disclosure tradition. Is the OH Sec. of State flipping SCOTUS the bird? An arrest in VA over GOP election shenanigans. And in WI, ALEC poster boy Thompson is caught underwriting Iranian uranium mining! And hey! Last day to vote for nominees in the
2012 Stitcher Awards!
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